Bryan Ferry – Julie Burchill recants

My first reaction was well fuck you, you upscaled your notoriety by unfairly kicking the shit out of Ferry for years and now you want to get paid for column inches revisiting it. But it is a fairly thorough piece that left me thinking “about time”. The bit on Ferry v Eno was interesting. Hadn’t read Eno’s comments before.

It’s behind a paywall, but I get the drift from the first few paragraphs.

We have seen Bryan Ferry a couple of times in recent years – at the Plymouth Pavilions from the 4th row, where the charisma of the guy was awe inspiring and the band beyond terrific. A couple of years later we stood in biblical rain on the beach at the Looe Festival waiting….and waiting….and waiting…to see him again. Now, I totally understand that the weather is beyond his control and this caused issues, but when he came on there wasn’t a word about it…not a ‘sorry to keep you waiting’ or ‘thanks for hanging around in this’…nada. The set was good, but you really did get the feeling he just wanted to get it done and get off the stage. The next day, we happened to be in the hotel where, as I found out, all the musicians stay. I asked the receptionist how it was having them stay there, and she said it was great, except for BF who insisted that he have his own area partitioned off and that no one was to approach him or speak to him. Two years later in Looe I mentioned him to a local resident, recounted my story, and apparently the whole town knew he had been a complete arse the whole time he was there. Mrs. T won’t listen to his records any more!

I think Ferry probably is sufficiently a precious part of UK 20th c. musical history to allow him to be, well, a bit precious. I went off him as his solo albums seemed more and more re-writes of the same tune and style, and kept putting off the always promised new Roxy M material. However he has somehow now just become Roxy Music, his live shows being more a Roxy tribute than to his own solo material. I haven’t seen him and never did see RM, but he is high on my hitlist, having missed him last time around.

Not sure that’s true – he’s done 3 or 4 UK tours in the last 7 or 8 years I reckon – and always delivers a solid show as well. I have only seen Roxy once, on that reunion tour a few years back. Big disappointment – not necessarily their fault, just that they were competing with the horrible acoustics of the Manchester arena. Whereas Ferry has always been in 2,00 seat concert halls – much better.

Recanting is a very former Communist thing to do, isn’t it? Many, many years ago I found Julie Burchill’s contrariness thought-provoking and her essays in The Face really made me think about certain established positions on the likes of Ian Paisley, Yasser Arafat and the Arab-Israeli issue. But she seems to have spent most of the last 30 years navel gazing and reflecting on her own youthful fabulousness.

Given her journalistic roots, it’s ironic that music was always her weak point, tipping the Tom Robinson Band and Poly Styrene as the best hopes for the future, for example in The Boy Looked at Johnny. So I don’t think I can be bothered to investigate her new position on Bryan Ferry and/or Roxy Music.

As for what Birchill has to say. Well, it’s just the usual polemic from her. Everything is (slightly) exaggerated for effect. It’s all black and white (Ferry was ace, then he was crap, now he’s ace again). It’s all re-written history of course. At the time of punk, to the media acolytes it was year zero. So, everything pre Dec 76 was unlistenable and consigned to the bonfires. No-one singled out Roxy, they were just lumped with the rest. It was only over the next 5 years that slowly bands felt it was OK to admit liking some pre 76 music and Roxy were one of the first to be allowed to like again. So, people like Siouxsie started to say they always liked Roxy, Bowie, T-Rex. It was even longer before we realised that John Lydon was a huge fan of Van Der Graaf, Roxy Music (of course) and even Pink Floyd (remember that T-Shirt?).

Not surprised.
Ex-punks (13 in 1972 – great timing!) who love classical music, Abba, prog, the f***** Wombles are two-a-penny. Can’t move for ’em.
If the Referendum had been about getting rid of ex-punks I’d have been the first in the queue to vote Leave. I’d have even campaigned on the issue.

Funny, but it appears the only music that Burchill, Baker, Elms etc. don’t listen to is punk.

For the record, I still hate Bryan Ferry, and Eno, and I’m 100% sure I always will.